It’s an extremely rare example of a “seashell horn” from the Paleolithic period, the team concluded. And it still works — a musician recently coaxed three notes from the 17,000-year-old shell.

Seashell solo. A recording of an approximately 18,000-year-old conch shell that was made into a horn demonstrates the sounds it could have made. The tones are close to the musical notes C, D and C ...

A horn made from a conch shell over 17,000 years ago has blasted out musical notes for the first time in millennia. Archaeologists originally found the seashell in 1931, in a French cave that ...

A large conch shell overlooked in a museum for decades is now thought to be the oldest known seashell instrument — and it still works, producing a deep, plaintive bleat, like a foghorn from the ...

Like the other able-bodied villagers in Fusing (復興) on the coast of Yilan’s Jhuangwei Township (壯圍), a 14-year-old Lin Jung-wen (林榮文) would drop whatever he was doing and run toward the ocean at the ...

A seashell found in a French cave in 1931 appears to have been modified by prehistoric people so that it could be used like a trumpet. This horn, however, is not the oldest known musical instrument.

These stylistic similarities can be indicative of some special ceremonial practice where the seashell horn was sounded near to the bison’s picture for spiritual, celebratory or other reasons.

This seashell horn, with its unique sonority, both deep and strong with an enduring reverberation, sheds light on a musical dimension until now unknown in the context of Upper Paleolithic societies.

Ancient shell horn can still play a tune after 18,000 years A large conch shell overlooked in a museum is now thought to be the oldest known seashell instrument, and it can still play a tune ...

She feared that playing the 12-inch shell might damage it, but it didn’t. The horn produced clear C, C sharp and D notes. The researchers estimate it to be around 18,000 years old.

The horn produced clear C, C sharp and D notes. The researchers estimate it to be around 18,000 years old. Their findings were published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances .